Das Bergsteigen wird durch die Existenz von Bergen sehr erschwert.

(Mountain climbing is made difficult by the existence of mountains.)

- Jan Rys

Alexander and Mowgli had stopped their journey through America for half an hour. Their car was parked at the side of the road. They had gotten out of it and started to jog back the way they had just driven. Neither of them could stand sitting in the car for the whole day and so they had decided to take a break several times a day, to “stretch their legs” as Mowgli put it.

“You see the mountain peaks over there?”, Mowgli asked and pointed to the snow topped summits of the Andes all around them. “From time to time I miss the snow. When my daughter is born, I'll have to take her to Europe some time. In winter.”

“Why Europe?”, Alexander asked. “Don't you have the Himalayas at least partly on your side of the border?”

“She'll still be a child, I can't go mountain climbing with her”, Mowgli said. “Besides: That's at the other end of India. Getting there is like getting to another continent, so why not just do that?”

“I've never been mountain climbing”, Alexander said. “Going up a mountain... I think it must be quite fun. Difficult as well, probably.”

“I don't think it's as difficult as people make it out to be”, Mowgli claimed.

“During the race through America along the Panamerica road we had hit upon the idea of going mountain climbing”, Mr Tuniak told me. “It wasn't difficult to convince Mowgli to join me. He thought that he could do anything regarding... regarding what he called 'pure nature'.”

“Because he had grown up in the jungle?”, I asked.

“Yes, exactly”, Mr Tuniak said. “But to his defence, it has to be said that most of the time he was right. He could move through a forest as quick as any other animal I've ever seen. Have you ever heard of Parkour?”

“That's some kind of street racing, isn't it?”, I guessed. “Where people run up the side of buildings as if they were Spider-Man?”

“And Mowgli was precisely like that when he was moving through a forest”, Mr Tuniak explained. “Which is also why he wanted us to start on a more difficult mountain and not an easy one. There is a French scale that defines how difficult it is to climb a mountain.”

“A scale from one to ten, with one being the easiest?”

“Not quite, there is no upper limit”, Mr Tuniak corrected me. “Back in the 90ies, it went up to seven or eight, if I remember it correctly. Nowadays I think they have some places they designated as eleven and twelve. We agreed to start on level four.” He shook his head. “Mowgli managed to get up the mountain, I stayed in the valley. I knew of course that Mowgli was far more capable than me regarding any kind of sport, but such a definite proof of that... It was a bit to simply let it rest for me.”

“So you went back into the past and learned to climb mountains there?”

“That I did”, Mr Tuniak agreed. “And then I went back to Mowgli and we planned several more of our mountain expeditions. All level four or higher.”

Alexander was sitting in front of his tent – part of the base camp – waiting for the flame of the camping stove to cook the soup. The other tents of the camp were blocking his view, but he could hear noise and voices and guessed that the group which had taken off in the morning to reach the peak of the mountain had returned. It had been their second try. They had already tried the climb unsuccessfully the day before. Alexander had been part of the group, but he was forced to admit that his abilities were simply not sufficient. But it didn't bother him this time. In the last few months he had climbed four other mountains and being defeated by the fifth was by far not as bad as being defeated by the first.

Mowgli came back, visibly exhausted and climbed into his tent.

“Don't you want any soup?”, Alexander asked.

“No, thanks, maybe later”, Mowgli answered from inside the tent. “I'm too tired to eat.”

Another man, Yuuto, the only Japanese of the group, was walking past Alexander at this moment, going to his own tent. “Well, it was not that bad”, he said.

“No?” Mowgli's head appeared in the opening of his tent. “I do remember seeing you nearly slipping and dropping down.”

Yuuto just shrugged. “It still wasn't that bad”, he repeated. “If you really want to climb dangerous mountains, give me a call.”

He gave Alexander his card and disappeared into his tent.

“I've still got his card”, Mr Tuniak said and handed it to me.

There was print on both sides of it. On one side there were Japanese signs, on the other side the same information was repeated, this time in English. It was the business card of a hotel called Hoshi Ryokan.

“Yuuto was living in a hotel?”, I asked.

“For one thousand and three hundred years”, Mr Tuniak answered.

“He is an immortal!”

“It was the first and only time that I introduced Philip to an immortal he hadn't known before”, Mr Tuniak remembered with a smile.

“How did you discover that he was an immortal?”

“By accident. At first Mowgli and I didn't want to take him up on his offer, but in the end we called on him. We visited him in this hotel, where the owner told us that... well, actually it's not really hotel, it's more like a... a restaurant with a few rooms. And it was founded in the eight century. I wanted to know, if that was true or just a local legend and travelled into the past.”

“I thought you never visited Japan in the past, because you would draw to much attention to yourself?”

“I just wanted to take a look. I didn't want to make contact with the people. And then I saw Yuuto there and knew immediately what he was. There is actually a whole legend about the founding of the Hoshi Ryokan and I'm pretty sure he is at least partly the inspiration for it.” His voice trailed off and then stopped completely. “But that's not what I wanted to talk about.”

“You wanted to talk about this dangerous mountain?”, I asked.

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak confirmed. “Although it is not a mountain, it's a landscape. A wide area on Madagascar.”

There were three of them: Alexander, Mowgli and Yuuto. They had rented a helicopter to reach the Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park. Before they landed, Yuuto circled a few times over the area, where they would be walking and climbing. They saw big stone formations, like teeth or enormous stalagmites that had forced their way out of the earth. In between them bushes and trees were growing.

“If we are lucky, you can get a species named after you”, Yuuto told his two companions, as he was guiding the helicopter down for a landing. “If you see an animal, you can be pretty sure that you are the first person who has seen it. That whole area is practically unexplored.”

“It doesn't look that dangerous”, Mowgli said. He pointed to the special equipment they had brought with them. Yuuto had taken care of that. Since it was his second visit to the park, he knew what to expect, what would be useful there and what useless. And normal climbing gear, he had declared, was useless.

“You can not tell from afar, you had to get closer to see that the edges of the stones were very sharp, like knives”, Mr Tuniak explained. “We had to wear special shoes and gloves the whole time we were there. And once we had started, we appreciated the gear Yuuto had made us take there. The stones would have cut a normal rope in two within seconds there.”

“And did you discover any new species there?”

“Possible, but frankly, we didn't pay that much attention to it. We were so focused on not getting cut in two or otherwise hurt, that we couldn't spare thoughts for anything else. Yuuto was always in front of us and looking for the easiest paths, but even those were still very difficult.”

They had finally found a place where they could rest for a moment. It was an empty space between two stones, not big enough to lie down, but at least one could sit down without having to call an ambulance afterwards. Even Mowgli had to admit that the place was exhausting him. Alexander was already wearing a bandage around his left arm where he had cut himself on a stone edge an hour earlier.

“Take a rest, I'll look for the best way to proceed from here”, Yuuto told them and climbed on alone.

“His thousand years of training do pay off”, Mowgli said, once they were alone. “He seems to have an unlimited amount of energy.”

“And I faint if I even think about the fact that we have to go back all the way we have just come to get to the helicopter”, Alexander said. “Can't you two go back without me and bring it here?”

“And land where?”, Mowgli asked. “I'm very sure those stones would even cut the helicopter into little pieces.” He leaned with his back on one of the few smooth surfaces that surrounded them. “Why are we here anyway?”

“Because we didn't believe him”, Alexander reminded him. “When we were talking to him in the Hoshi Ryokan we were sure he was showing off and exaggerating. We could barely suppress our laughter when he was talking about stones like razors.”

“It did sound pretty ridiculous”, Mowgli said. “We must introduce Yuuto to O'Jack. I'm sure they could talk and exchange stories with each other for longer than we can live.”

“At least I know for sure that I'm getting out of this here.”

“How's that?”

Alexander told Mowgli about the big family meeting with his mothers. He had talked to older versions of himself there and even if they didn't disclose any future developments of his life, their simple existence was proof enough that he would continue to life for a very long time.

“So, no matter what you do, you know for sure that you will make it out alive?”, Mowgli wanted to know. “If that was the case, I would do... well, quite a few things.”

“Just because I survive, doesn't mean I won't get hurt, maybe even badly”, Alexander explained. “And I don't have any real desire for pain or spending several months in a hospital bed. But why did you come here?”

Mowgli was silent for a few moments and when he talked again it was with an uncharacteristically serious voice. “Because this is probably the last chance for me to do something like this. I will become a father in one month. The park is finally starting to get the way I imagined it would be and there is all this... organisation, administration. It takes up a lot of time. This will most probably be our last big foolery we will do together.”

“He was right”, Mr Tuniak said. “It was the last time we went on... such a big expedition together, our last foolery. But not my last. Because I had met Yuuto.”

NEXT WEEK

Time is the school in which we learn,

Time is the fire in which we burn.